


Gods and Mortals

by emmagnetised



Series: All The Little Lights [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Everyone Is Alive, F/M, Gen, Multi, The Avengers Won, The Wyvern, Tony Stark's Sister, one shots, team fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24501109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmagnetised/pseuds/emmagnetised
Summary: Maggie wasn't there when Loki returned to Earth.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Original Female Character(s), Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: All The Little Lights [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1305146
Comments: 18
Kudos: 31





	1. Part One

It started in Tunisia. Reports of the incident were sparse, so Maggie pored over what she could in the Avengers operations room with the analysts: locals reported the appearance of some kind of figure surrounded by 'grey light' who'd stood in place for anywhere between one and three minutes. Initial reports suggested three casualties. And the photos of the aftermath… Maggie couldn't make heads or tails of it. In the middle of what had been a bustling market now rested a curved, shallow hole made up of blackened earth. It looked as if a giant ball had dropped and left an indent in the ground. The hole was about ten feet in diameter _._ Where there must have once been pavement and stalls was _nothing_. It was as if everything that had once been inside that ten-foot circle had been vaporized, including the unfortunate civilians. The figure, whatever it was, left absolutely nothing in its wake.

An analyst showed Maggie initial atmospheric readings from the incident site, and she raised her eyebrows at the numbers – the air was more or less fit to breathe now, but there were signs that it had undergone a sharp spike in toxicity.

"There's also readings that energy density in the area dropped significantly," the analyst said.

"Well that's to be expected if all the matter inside the zone got vaporized-"

"The drop was too sharp for that to be the only cause. And these readings go up ten feet."

Maggie bit her lip. "So we've got a ten-foot spherical zone where everything that used to be inside it is gone." She shook her head. "What the _hell_ are we looking at?"

* * *

She didn't get a chance to update the Avengers on the intel before the next incident. An analyst stood up from their desk and turned to the operations hub, where Maggie stood with her brother, Bruce, and Drs Foster and Selvig.

"There's been another one in Australia!" the analyst called. "And this one's on video!"

* * *

A CCTV camera at the beach captured Incident #2. Out of the blue on a clear, sunny day, a figure suddenly appeared on the white sand. The figure was indistinct: just a vaguely humanoid shape shrouded in a hazy grey mist from which shone a piercing white light. The light shone so brightly that it cast everything else on camera into almost pitch blackness. Beachgoers screamed and fled from the shining figure. But aside from the screams, there was no noise to mark the appearance of the figure.

One minute and twenty seconds later, the figure blinked out of existence as suddenly as it had appeared. It left behind a ten-foot curved indent in the earth.

Maggie squinted at the footage, rewinding and slowing down until she saw it: in the second after the figure disappeared the air within the incident zone shimmered, like air above an airport runway on a hot day. Her brow furrowed.

"That's an energy exchange," she murmured.

The scientists around her leaned in. "You're right," Doctor Foster murmured. "The outside atmosphere is filtering into the inner. That means-"

"It means this figure isn't just sucking up the ground and any objects or people inside its reach," Selvig said grimly. "It's taking the _air_ , too."

* * *

Over the next three days fifteen more incidents were recorded. Eighteen more civilians got caught inside incident zones and were utterly destroyed – there was no sign of even a shred of their DNA, or anything, inside the zone left behind by the figure. In fact, that's what all scientific testing revealed: _nothing._ Each site was wiped clean of fragments, fiber, soil, or even any chemical makeup besides what filtered into the site after the figure disappeared. The figure appeared, reduced everything in a ten-foot radius to _nothing_ , and disappeared.

The Avengers worked around the clock. The scientists did every test and reading they could think of, theorizing what the figure could be, how to track it, and how to make it stop. They hadn't gotten very far. Carol arrived from the far reaches of space with a heavy brow.

Steve wanted to mobilize the Avengers to be near the next incident, but the reality was that with such a short window of action – one minute and twenty seconds precisely – there was no way they could get to an incident on time. So they hung back at the base, frustrated at each new report of the hazy grey figure. Steve focused on coordinating with other agencies and organizations.

The world lost its mind. People had died and no one was anywhere close to an answer – not even the Avengers.

On day three Steve had brought in Doctor Strange. His people had been sensing the disturbances, but Strange didn't know what they were or how to stop them. Tony balked at the "magical" assistance, but everyone else was desperate for answers. Strange tracked down archaic books and legends and coordinated with the scientific team, searching for a clue. After some bickering, he even teamed up with Carol.

Then there came rumblings from across the world that people suspected the figure was an Asgardian. The Asgardian embassy, newly constructed in Manhattan with an ambassador and a working staff of Asgardians and Midgardians, was promptly besieged by protestors. Thankfully, New Asgard went unmolested.

Thor had been on Earth during the first incident, and didn't seem to know what to do about the unfolding diplomatic disaster. Maggie was vaguely aware of Valkyrie announcing that they were convening to find out more information, but she was too deep in energy readings and satellite projections to really notice.

On the evening of day three, the figure hit New York. The Avengers raced there, but they were still ten minutes too late. They came upon a horrific scene: a blackened, curved indent in the pavement in the middle of a busy intersection, surrounded by flashing and wailing emergency services vehicles. On the sidewalk a few feet from the incident zone crouched Spider-Man with a screaming man in his arms. Maggie and Tony landed in front of him, and he looked up with wide eye-lenses.

"I webbed him up and got him out," he explained, his voice dazed. "I wasn't fast enough."

Maggie's eyes tracked from Peter's masked face to the screaming man, and down to his leg. Below the knee the man's leg had been sheared away, the line so clean it could have been done surgically. The stump was bleeding all over the sidewalk despite Spider-Man's best efforts to compress the wound, and a black, ashy film coated the incised area.

The paramedics rushed in and bustled the screaming man away from Spider-Man, who looked down at the blood on his hands. It glinted in the flashing blue and red lights.

"Were there any casualties?" Tony asked, slipping out of his armor and coming to rest a hand on Peter's shoulder.

"No." Peter's voice was wobbly, but to Maggie's surprise, he let out a hoarse laugh. "New Yorkers are used to getting out of dodge at the first sign of any alien stuff."

Maggie put her hand on Peter's other shoulder. "You saved that man's life, Spider-Man. You did good."

His head bowed.

Tony cocked his head. "You want in on chasing this foggy bastard?"

Spider-Man looked up, his shoulders firm and his head high. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

* * *

Maggie wasn't there when Loki returned to Earth. In fact she didn't find out he was back (or even alive) for at least a few hours, because she was up to her eyeballs in work.

She'd been at a convention of scientists in Manhattan with Bruce and Rhodey. They walked out of the conference room, brows furrowed, just as F.R.I.D.A.Y. pinged their phones: _Captain Rogers and Mr Stark have called an Avengers meeting. 40minutes, at the facility._

Maggie met Bruce and Rhodey's eyes. "They must've found something, if they're pulling everyone from their assignments." Everyone had been doggedly chasing up their own leads, looking into possibilities from ancient sorcerers to vengeful spirits to anomalies in the mathematical makeup of the universe.

Rhodey blew out a breath. "This better be good."

When she, Bruce, and Rhodey walked into the Avengers meeting room, mostly everyone was already there. And this crisis had really brought out the big guns. Bucky stood by a holoscreen talking in a low tone with Sam, Scott Lang, and Hope Van Dyne. Vision and Wanda talked with Dr Strange, who seemed less annoyed than he usually did. Carol stood with her hands folded across her chest and a grim look on her face, but she shot Maggie a quick smile. Natasha and Peter (dressed in his suit) stood by the Wakandans (T'Challa, Shuri, and Okoye) listening to their conversation with Dr Selvig, Dr Foster and Maria Hill. Clint leaned against the back wall with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. He'd come out of retirement to help with inter-agency coordination. The Guardians were tied up across the galaxy, but they'd said they'd come when they could.

The team stood around the wide, light-filled room surrounded by holoscreens full of data, surveillance, and live tracking. They looked… stressed. Maggie saw lined faces, bags under eyes, anxiously tapping feet. The world was looking to this group, and this group didn't have the answers. And at any moment, a shrouded grey figure could appear anywhere in the world and suck up another pocket of matter.

The team all looked up as Maggie, Bruce, and Rhodey walked in.

"How did the convention go?" asked Shuri. She'd been invited, but had to stay back to help Tony and the others finalize their tracking system.

Bruce sighed. "We didn't learn much we didn't already know. They confirmed that the figure is some kind of cosmological being, and they agreed that it probably has some link to dark energy."

"There were a lot of 'probably's," Rhodey added.

Bruce continued: "The scientists from Switzerland agreed with our conclusion that the being absorbs every form of energy within its radius: plants, animals, oxygen, sound, light, heat, radiation… you name it. Ergokinetic absorption."

Bucky held up a metal hand. "What's that?"

"Energy absorption," Maggie clarified. "Whatever this thing is, it sucks up ambient and dimensional energy. The being's fundamental makeup is similar to nothing else in this galaxy, which is why we're looking into dark energy. There's two variants in the theory of dark energy: the cosmological constant, which has a constant energy density, and scalar fields which vary in density-"

"But we have to be looking at a scalar field of dark energy," Bruce cut in. They'd rehashed this discussion twice on their way over. "If this being is modulating its density and travelling then there's no way the cosmological constant theory holds up."

Shuri cleared her throat. "But the travelling doesn't necessarily _disprove_ that. The being's energy density is low, we know that, that's how it absorbs everything around it. We could be looking at vacuum energy."

"Of _course_." That was Hope Van Dyne – she stood on the other side of the room with her arms crossed and her eyes focused.

"Right, that's what they suggested at the conference," Maggie said. "Vacuum energy, but instead of it being in the background of the universe, this being is able to concentrate it at a specific point." She clenched her fist to demonstrate.

After a few moments of silence, Sam let out a weighty sigh. "I'm not sure it's worth asking you to explain."

Maggie blinked and glanced around, wincing when she noticed that about eighty percent of the people in the room just looked baffled by the conversation she'd just had with her fellow scientists. Bucky smiled in the way he did when he didn't understand her but he found her explanations charming. Dr Strange was scowling, but that could mean anything.

Dr Foster cleared her throat. "Essentially," she said, "There's a theoretical form of energy called vacuum energy. It's an underlying background energy throughout the universe. It can be observed in vacuum fluctuations, which appear at the event horizons of black holes." Sensing her audience's eyes begin to glaze, she sighed. "It's a very theoretical and difficult-to-prove theory. But think of vacuum energy as… a dimensional force. It exists everywhere, and nowhere at the same time."

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so how does that help us with this figure?"

Foster bit her lip. "It tells us that this is a cosmological being tied to inherent forces of the universe."

"And how does that help us?"

Foster didn't have an answer for that. And, judging by the faces of the other eggheads, neither did anyone else. Maggie sure didn't.

Rhodey pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yep, that's basically how the convention went. Everyone's got theories, and they're apparently very fascinating in terms of pure science, but we didn't get much actionable intel."

Scott Lang threw up his hands. "So what the heck are we all here for?"

"We didn't call the meeting," Maggie shrugged. "Tony and Steve did. Where are they?"

Everyone glanced around at each other.

The door slid open again.

Maggie didn't get surprised very often nowadays. She lived with a World War Two veteran and their three-legged dog, and every few months she went out for coffee with a bioengineered space racoon.

But when Tony, Steve, and Thor walked in flanking a tall, slender, dark-haired man who Maggie _distinctly_ recognized from archival footage, her mouth dropped open.

Hers was probably the most measured reaction in the room.

Maggie didn't know if she'd seen the Avengers so united in dislike since they'd taken down Thanos. The entire room burst out in shouts of surprise and anger, weapons were drawn, and the sheer force of displeasure seemed to knock the newcomer back a step. Everyone with a nanotech or Vibranium suit instantly suited up.

Maggie had seen the footage of the Battle of New York (and had glimpsed some of it herself in her jaunt to the past) so she, like much of the rest of the world, could recognize Loki on sight. She had to admit he looked different – this wasn't the crazed, wild-eyed would-be oppressor of New York with glinting golden horns. He looked less… sallow? He wore human-ish clothes; a sharp black suit under a long dark trench coat, with a dark green tie. He also appeared to have a split lip and a black eye – Maggie wasn't aware that could _happen_ to Asgardians.

Loki's eyes flicked across the packed room as the Avengers' surprise deafened the room – he was hard to read, not quite wary, not quite amused. Thor, in his usual mortal garb of jeans and a woolen cardigan, darted forward and held up his palms to the crowd of Avengers.

"Peace, friends!" he called. "Loki is not here for war. He… he's done a lot since he was last on Earth, and… he's changed his mind about the world-domination thing." Thor shot them all a thin smile.

"I thought he was supposed to be dead," Rhodey said from within the War Machine armor. He had three cannons aimed at Loki's head. The dark-haired Asgardian just stood in the doorway with his hands loose by his sides and his eyes glittering. Steve and Tony stood on either side of him, grim-faced.

"He got better," Thor explained.

Tony stepped forward and set a hand on Thor's shoulder. "Guys, quit the Texas standoff," he raised his eyebrows at the forest of ammunition which had sprouted upon Loki's entrance. Wanda and Dr Strange had called upon their powers and lowered into battle stances, Sam, Rhodey, Bucky, Natasha, and Maria had pulled guns, Bruce had clenched his big green fists, and Okoye had brandished her spear in front of the suited-up T'Challa and Shuri. Scott had suited up, but looked vaguely confused. Peter had lowered to a ready crouch. Jane Foster and Dr Selvig, up at the very back, were glaring.

Maggie realized, belatedly, that she hadn't suited up, though she and Bucky had slid closer together.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Thor came to us a few days ago and suggested that his supreme majesty here might have some useful advice for us since we're dealing with" – he sucked his teeth – " _magic_. Turns out he's been alive and in hiding, Thor figured it out recently." He looked over his shoulder at Loki, who listened silently. "He's like a cockroach. Just can't squash him."

"Loki is Asgard's expert on magic," Thor chimed in. "His witch-like abilities can help us to find and put an end to this being."

"I'm not a witch," Maggie heard Loki mutter to his brother. Thor ignored him.

Maggie looked over her shoulder to Clint. She hadn't been there for the Battle of New York the first time around, but she knew the stories. She knew what had been done to Clint. But Clint seemed the least surprised out of everyone – angry, certainly, glaring at Loki, but Maggie could see from his face that he'd already known Loki was back.

Maggie then looked to Bucky. He shrugged and slid his gun back into its holster on his belt. _If Steve says it's okay,_ he mouthed to her. Maggie rolled her eyes at him and then turned back to the main threat.

"Tony," came Natasha's voice. Others in the room had started to drop their hackles, but she hadn't wavered for a moment. "You really want to trust _him_?"

Steve stepped forward. "We don't have to trust him," he said, his eyes falling first on the original Avengers, the ones who'd had to put up with Loki's shit in the first place. "But we think he can help. We know what he's done, and we're not forgetting the past. But we need to protect people, _today_."

Well, that sold Maggie. She hadn't drawn weapons on Loki to begin with, but she put her hands in her pockets to signal her agreement. Tony noticed and nodded to her.

One by one, Avengers lowered their weapons. Most of them only knew Loki by reputation, but it was a hell of a reputation.

Natasha was last. It took her looking over her shoulder at Clint, to see his angry acceptance, for her to finally holster her pistol. "Fine," she muttered.

Loki finally stepped through the doorway, and every eye was on him again. His eyes flicked around the room. He had dark, clever eyes. Maggie could see why they called him _trickster._

His lip curled as he looked at them. "You have multiplied."

"Yeah," Tony replied. "So we could kick your ass five times as hard. Don't try anything."

Loki spread his hands in an imitation of helplessness, but he didn't take his eyes off them. Maggie saw his attention land on those he didn't know, assessing them. He dismissed Peter, Scott, Rhodey, Sam, Okoye, and Bucky the instant he saw them, his eyes just sliding over them. He gave Hope and T'Challa a second glance each, and frowned at Wanda and Vision. His eyes rested on Maggie for a second before moving on. Impossible to know what was going on in his head. His eyes widened as he spotted Carol and her iconic suit – recognition? But then she just stared flatly back at him and he looked away with a smile.

"So what now?" came Clint's voice. Everyone turned to see him glaring daggers across the room. "The big magic expert's here, great. What have you got to add?"

Maggie suddenly had an inkling of where Loki's black eye might have come from. But then Steve shifted, and she noticed he had grazed knuckles. Her eyes flicked from Clint, to Steve, to Tony. _Hm._ She hoped it had helped them work out some emotional issues.

Loki spread his hands. "Thor has described your problem, and it's obvious the root is magical. I can offer my assistance in identifying and tracking the problem."

"How do we know you're not just trying to steal Thor's throne again?" challenged Bruce, who had clearly not forgotten the Battle of New York either.

Loki raised an eyebrow at the Hulk-Bruce hybrid. "The throne he gave up to hitchhike across the universe? It's not much of a throne anymore. And anyway, I tried being King of Asgard. I sat on the throne for years. It's not all it's cracked up to be."

Thor huffed. "You emptied the wine cellars, created a giant statue of yourself and put on a play about your own life."

"Ah, yes," Loki smiled. "The perks were good."

Steve cleared his throat pointedly.

Loki looked over his shoulder at him, then turned back to the rest of them. "Very well. Whatever this creature is, its workings are far too complicated for Midgardians to understand-"

Maggie cleared her throat. "Actually, we've developed a tracking system for the particle vibration frequency of this particular brand of magic." She stepped away from Bucky into the no-mans-land that the Avengers had created when they drew back to defend against Loki. "If we triangulate using Stark Industries satellites we can locate each site of magic use down to the closest square mile."

As she spoke, Tony stepped forward to join her and flicked his fingers to bring up a holographic overlay of the globe, with the satellites depicted in glowing red. He twisted his fingers again and yellow dots glowed on the globe where the previous incidents had occurred.

He continued for her: "We're more or less getting updates in real time, give or take a few seconds for satellite error. F.R.I.D.A.Y. will alert us to the next incidence of _magic_ use."

Loki looked between them, narrow-eyed. "How is this… possible."

"Science," Maggie offered. "It's what happens when you parade a whole line of magic users past a scientist and tell them that they haven't got a hope of understanding." As she spoke she noticed the actual scientists in the room creeping forward from where they'd been hidden by territorial Avengers.

Loki waved a hand. "Not that, I'm aware of the irritating Midgardian desire to understand at all costs." He pointed at Maggie. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"That's a very complicated question," Maggie deadpanned in reply. "Would you like me to give you a biological, geographical, or more philosophical answer?"

Loki whirled to face Tony, seeming almost angry. "I did my research when I first came to this world, I would have known if you had spawn."

Tony and Maggie made identical faces of disgust.

Steve stepped forward. "We're getting off track. We might know where the next attack will be, but we need a plan to deal with it-"

"Yeah, _dad_ , what's the plan?" Maggie grinned at Tony.

Tony elected to ignore her. He cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "Here's the plan. We find the magic-user, and then – and I want you to listen very carefully – we kick their ass."

Bucky shrugged. "Sounds good to me."

Steve looked heavenward.

Scott raised his hand. "What if they don't have an ass? What if they're an alien without an ass?"

Maggie pointed at him. "That is an excellent question." She turned to Loki. "Hey, you know of any assless aliens?"

Loki was still looking between her and Tony with narrowed eyes. "I do not understand this."

She met his eyes and held up two hands to make it simple. "Aliens. Asses."

He frowned. "You are talking about my…?"

"No she isn't!" Bucky and Tony said simultaneously.

Maggie grinned. "No, I like my asses human. And a hundred years old." Most people in the room looked disgusted at that, including Bucky, which she considered a personal win.

"Cosmological being with devastating power?" prompted Carol from across the room.

"Right," Thor, who had been watching his brother interact with his team with a mix of concern and pride, strode forward. "Let's discuss this."

With minimal grumbling, the Avengers gathered around the circle table with the globe hologram floating over it.

It took all of them to give Loki the brief. Those who usually worked in the mission control room described each incident, the magicians gave their input, those on the combat side described what had already been done to try to prevent the being, and the scientists (Foster and Selvig were still glaring at Loki) explained everything they knew so far. Maggie let the others do most of the talking, and watched Loki absorb the information. She trusted Tony and Steve (Thor too, but not about his brother), but she knew better than to let someone called the God of Lies go unobserved.

He regarded them all with an air of superiority and displeasure, but every now and then she could _just_ see the veneer slip, when he grew absorbed in what they were telling him. The sneer would drop a little and his eyes would turn to the data, empty of everything but concentration.

Soon a few separate discussions had begun across the table, while Loki looked over their work on the holoscreen before him. He flicked through scientific data and Doctor Strange's notes at startling speed.

"Your _seiðr_ is so primitive," he eventually muttered. He got a few eyebrow raises around the table, but didn't take any notice.

"Means magic," Bucky supplied.

Everyone turned to him, and he shrugged. "What? I read books."

Loki's eyes flicked up to him. "Admirable, but not quite an accurate translation. S _eiðr_ is magic and science. We do not pretend that one is real and the other isn't. It's how we read and manipulate the energy forces of the universe."

"Sounds a lot like science to me," Tony grumbled. Doctor Strange pointedly twisted his fingers and let off a flare of orange light.

"Loki?" Steve prompted, nodding at the readings.

The trickster eyed the data a few moments longer before leaning back. "This is useless to me." He gestured a hand. "I need to see the being in action."

"That's not possible," T'Challa interjected, "We haven't been able to get to an incident while it is underway-"

"Well I will," Loki finished smugly.

Doctor Strange _hmmed._ "Now that we have an accurate tracking system, I will be able to open portals for whoever wishes to travel through."

Loki eyed the neurosurgeon. "I remember your portals. I'd rather not."

Doctor Strange's eyes flashed.

"Okay, what's our contact plan?" Sam asked. "That thing vaporizes everything it touches."

Steve nodded. "Sam is right. We can't fight this thing without understanding it first." He looked to Carol, who jerked her chin in a nod.

"I agree. This is something that none of us understand. If _I'm_ telling you to stop and think before punching something, you should probably listen."

The team assembled in the conference room began discussing their plans for observing and measuring the next incident. It was eventually agreed that Loki should go, as well as Thor to monitor him. From there, the rest of the observation team was decided. Jane and Selvig gave an idea of the kind of equipment needed to measure something like this being up close. Meanwhile, the others were tasked with setting up potential weapons, managing agency coordination, civilian rescue, and preparing for when they'd need to launch an assault.

As people began to filter out of the room on tasks and broke off into small conversations, Maggie pulled Tony aside. "Hey, where's the little terror?" she murmured.

"Back upstate," he replied in a lower tone. "No way we wanted her near any of this." He shot a significant glance across the room at Loki, who was rolling his eyes at something Thor had said. "Best not mention it, really."

"Didn't plan to. Artemis is at the sitters."

They both watched Loki talk to Thor and Bruce with a look of exasperation on his face. Maggie could see his potential power and she was determined not to underestimate him, but right now he just looked like a man frustrated by his brother.

"Is Clint okay?" she asked.

"He will be," Tony sighed. "We knew it had to be his call, letting Loki in on the hunt. He's not happy about it, obviously, but he knows that if Loki screws up this time then he's got no chance against all of us."

Maggie tapped her finger against her elbow and eyed Loki contemplatively. "He really threw you out a window once, huh?"

"Yeah," Tony muttered. "Though… word is, Loki might have been under some mind control himself. Neither of them will admit to it really, but…"

"But what?"

"His eyes are a different color."

"What?"

"Back when he was invading Earth," Tony said cautiously, "his eyes were blue."

Maggie looked back across the room and saw Loki narrow a pair of green, green eyes. A few moments of silence passed.

"You still beat him up, though," she eventually noted.

Tony shrugged. "He's still a dick."

"That he is."

* * *

Maggie didn't speak to Loki again until the being returned. She was too busy preparing scientific equipment and energy shields to worry too much about their new Asgardian friend, though she did keep about 30% of her focus on him when he was in the room.

At one point she and Bucky bumped into each other in the corridor outside the labs, he with an armful of ammunition and her with a metal contraption sprouting with wires.

Bucky touched his shoulder to hers briefly, offering warmth and support more than anything, and then jerked his head toward the glass wall overlooking the lab. Loki stood inside, closely flanked by Thor and Tony, shrugging at some question.

"I keep thinking I'll get used to meeting aliens," Bucky muttered. "But I never do."

Maggie raised her eyebrows. "This one reckons he's a god."

"If he says so," Bucky replied doubtfully. "Lot of bad blood in that room," he noted. He turned back to her. "You sure about this mission?" She'd been assigned to the observation team and he to the combat team.

She nodded. "Have to stop this thing. And Loki might have some plan we don't know about, but we can take him."

Bucky shifted the ammunition in his arms. "Yeah, and he knows that." He gave her a pointed look. "Keep an eye out."

"Oh that's good advice, I was actually planning on going in blindly-"

"Alright, alright," he said with a roll of his eyes. He nudged his shoulder against hers, and then they continued on opposite paths down the corridor.

It was at that moment that an alarm lit up the facility.

Maggie started running.

The loud blare of the alarm was replaced by F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice over the intercom: " _Incident located in the northwest Kalahari desert, in an uninhabited region. Observation team to the launch room._ "

Maggie skidded into the launch room, which was really the testing room adjoining the labs, with her arms full of the machine she'd been carrying and her hair in her eyes. Loki, Thor, Bruce, Tony, Vision, and Doctor Strange were already there, suited up and waiting, standing in a ring around the pile of machines that had been arranged. Maggie dropped her machine and suited up in an instant, the nanotech shooting out across her skin and over her mussed hair. She dropped to one knee and set her hands on the most important machine, Foster's interdimensional energy radar.

Steve was a second behind her. He came into the room at full sprint shouting " _Go-_ "

And half a second later the floor yawned open with an orange portal and they all fell through.

Maggie had trained with Strange's portals, so she didn't waste a second on disorientation. The minute her knee landed in hot orange sand she grabbed the energy radar, powered it on, and whirled to face the being.

She'd seen the footage but that couldn't prepare her for the real thing. Right in the middle of the sun-baked, shimmering desert sat a _sphere_ of hazy grey matter, ebbing and swirling like the mist in a fortune teller's ball. Within the mist the vague silhouette of a figure hovered, utterly indistinguishable. The sand at the edge of the sphere crumbled and turned black. Such a bizarre sight looked like it should be deafeningly loud, but Maggie heard nothing but the faint lilt of sand shifting under a light breeze.

Maggie shoved the interdimensional energy radar tripod stand into the sand, pointed it at the sphere, and then dashed for the next machine. She, Bruce, Vision and Tony whirled through the pile of equipment, trying to take as many readings as they could in the limited time they had left. Their suits measured everything they possibly could as well.

While setting up the sonar device Maggie slid within a foot of the sphere, and every hair on her body stood on end at the feeling of _pressure_ exuding from the sphere, as if it were trying to pull her in and tear her apart all at the same time.

"Watch it!" Tony barked. She jerked away.

Steve hovered for a moment before getting out of their way. If they'd had longer they could have shown him how to operate the equipment, but right now all he could do was watch and stare at the strange, silent figure in the sphere of emptiness as the sun beat down on the back of his neck.

"What the hell," he muttered.

Dr Strange circled the sphere, making runes in the air with his hands, but didn't get closer than ten feet to the being.

Thor shadowed his brother. The instant they'd landed Loki had slowly paced towards the swirling, devouring sphere, his green eyes utterly focused. As Maggie tossed a few energy readers into the sphere itself (they disintegrated instantly but she had to try, for _science_ ), she noticed green sparks out of the corner of her eye.

Loki raised a hand, and tendrils of green magic filtered toward the sphere. A wide-eyed Thor hovered over Loki's shoulder. Maggie kept one eye on the green light flickering around the edges of the grey mist, and the other on the Geiger counter she'd held up a foot away from the sphere.

Then a single emerald tendril moved _into_ the mist.

"No!" Maggie cried.

The whole sphere suddenly lit up a bright, vibrant green, making Maggie throw her arm up to shield her eyes, and she heard a gasp from behind her.

"Loki!"

The light vanished and Maggie turned to see Loki slump to the ground, ashen and pale.

Behind Maggie, Tony let out a cry of alarm. She whirled back around, heart pounding, but then sighed.

The being had vanished, leaving nothing but a curved indent of blackened matter in its wake. The dozens of machines set up around the incident site beeped and whirred.

"Loki! Loki, look at me!" Thor cried.

Maggie turned again. Loki wasn't looking good – he'd started to tremble where he lay half-propped against his brother. His eyelids drooped. Maggie thought she noticed a flash of blue across his pale face.

Thor looked up at Strange, desperate. "Send us back."

The Doctor whirled his hands, and the two brothers dropped into the orange portal that had opened in the sand beneath them.

"Let's finish here," Steve said, all business. "And get back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My goodness, has it really been 7 months since I last updated? Sorry this one took me so long you guys, I've been busy with life and my other story The Siren (go check it out if you haven't!), but it was a real joy to write Maggie again. I'll update with Part Two in a few days. Hope you're all safe and healthy!


	2. Part Two

The rest of the observation team arrived back at the Facility to a chorus of concern, followed by relief. In between filing sand samples and uploading data readings and having Bucky fuss over her, Maggie heard what had happened to Loki.

They'd had to rush him to the medical bay as soon as he arrived, and with the help of an Asgardian healer from the Manhattan embassy they were able to stabilize him. He'd lost fluids, blood, and muscle-mass, as if the being had sapped the life right out of him. He was asleep now.

_So the being can absorb matter outside its impact radius,_ Foster had noted, then looked a little bit sorry for Loki.

For now all they could do was compile the data from their measurements (all very interesting, but Maggie doubted it would help them put a stop to this) and wait for Loki to wake up.

* * *

By the time Loki was awake and well enough to walk, Valkyrie had wrangled her way out of the diplomatic disaster brewing and arrived at the facility. Maggie briefly exchanged a nod with her before the armored Asgardian disappeared into the medical bay to greet Thor and Loki. Though it seemed less like greeting than _yelling_. Maggie shrugged and went back to the operations room.

Half an hour later, the Asgardians joined the rest of the Avengers in the operations room. Loki still looked pale, but he stood on his own two feet and had that assessing light back in his eyes.

"You didn't die," Clint said from the other side of the large circle table, with a distinctly disappointed tone.

Loki spread his hands as if to say _well, these things happen._

The operations room had been a hubbub of activity, but at the entry of the Asgardians everyone seemed to sense that a Conversation was required.

Bruce was first to speak. "So, our readings have confirmed everything we know – the being creates a kind of vacuum field, absorbing every kind of matter and energy until a minute and a half later, it leaves. But we still don't know what it is, or what it wants."

Vision crossed his arms. "You interacted with the being, Loki. Did it reveal anything?"

Loki stepped up to the table, flanked by Thor and Valkyrie (who looked respectively worried and annoyed), and pressed his fingertips to the table's surface. "The being is an interdimensional leech," he explained. "These beings grow in the crushing vacuum of space, sightless and starving. Every few millennia one gets free and becomes a blight on other realms, feeding at will on life and light."

Maggie frowned. "How do you know this?"

Loki's lip curled up in a wry smile. "Aside from my first hand experience? I've read about them. There was a similar case in – in Jotunheim." His eyes flickered briefly to Thor and Valkyrie, then back. The Avengers listened silently. "But the Jotuns worshipped the leech as a higher being. They intended to cajole it, to turn it against their enemies."

"What happened?" asked Wanda.

"I don't know. The tale was incomplete."

Maggie's eyes narrowed as she watched Loki. He could be lying. She suspected that after thousands of years of practice, he probably didn't have a tell.

Steve crossed his arms. "So what does this thing want?"

Loki looked vaguely irritated. " _Energy_. Power. It's new to this realm, but it's learning. It will seek out targets with higher energy counts: animals, people, engines, reactors."

Faces around the table turned grim.

"So we need to bait it," Maggie surmised. Loki's green eyes flicked to her.

"We don't know what kind of energy it wants," Tony pointed out.

"I do," Loki responded. "It seeks the energy it was born of. It fell out of the darkest, most turbulent depths of the universe-"

"That could be some form of a scalar field of dark energy," Bruce pointed out, with a very distinct _I told you so_ tone.

"Or since it's a _leech_ , more likely vacuum energy," Shuri shot back.

Loki let out an exasperated sigh and then lifted his hands. Green magic flickered into existence between his palms, taking fine shapes and patterns. " _This_ is what I sensed when I… connected with the being. This is what it looks like. This is what it wants."

Clothing rustled as every scientist in the room leaned in.

The fine, criss-crossing shape etched in green light between Loki's hands looked like a nucleus, but not one Maggie recognized. She peered closer and noticed symbols in a mathematical language she didn't understand floating through the image.

Tony scratched his face. "We could work with that."

Bruce put his glasses on. "Yeah, yeah… if you help translate all this, Loki, we could… generate this power somehow as bait-"

"We'd have to build a hell of a reactor," Maggie said as she traced the curving green light with her eyes, "We'd basically be engineering the Casimir effect, which would mean reinventing the whole _discipline_ of quantum electrodynamics-"

"Nothing we haven't done before," Tony said with a dismissive hand. "Remember our time machine? We could take what we learned about the Planck constant and the oscillation technology and-"

"Bring in stochastic electrodynamics!" Maggie said, suddenly grinning. Tony broke into a grin as well. Bruce and Shuri had pulled up a holo-screen and begun taking notes and drawing up preliminary diagrams.

Loki glanced between Tony and Maggie before turning to Tony. "Did you clone yourself? I find it unlikely, given that she is far superior to you physically, and a woman."

Tony's smile dropped.

Steve cleared his throat. "How long will this take?"

Tony cocked his head. "Five days, a week?"

"We don't have that kind of time."

Maggie wanted to laugh; Tony just said he could generate a previously-unheard-of purely theoretical dimensional energy generator in _five days._ But she saw Steve's point.

"We have to make that kind of time," Tony shot back. "Set up a response team in the meantime to pull civilians out of the way."

Natasha arched her brow. "And when it starts hitting power sources?"

"We'll just have to hope that when that time comes, we'll have the biggest power source on the planet."

* * *

What followed was a frenzied week of invention. It reminded Maggie of the week in which they'd made their time machine, except there were three times as many people in the Avengers Facility so she got the chance to sleep every now and then.

Loki proved surprisingly helpful. He translated the strange symbols in his magical interpretation of the being's energy, and after a crash course in mortal engineering was able to help them create their vacuum energy engine (Jane Foster had realized on the second day that vacuum energy and dark energy might be the same thing and only Darcy Lewis was able to draw her away from her notes to get her to turn her focus back on making the engine).

They quickly realized that nothing on Earth could harness the interdimensional energy – the best they could hope for was to generate enough of it to tempt the being, and prevent it from poking a hole in the fragile fabric of Earth's atmosphere.

Loki was closely watched while he was in the Facility, but they were used to so much weirdness that after a while he started to blend in. What was a dark haired trickster god amongst former Air Force pilots who could shoot photon energy out of their hands, or maroon-faced omniscient androids? So generally Maggie didn't spend a lot of brainpower worrying about him.

At least until he showed up in her workshop.

It was technically the _Facility_ workshop but Maggie had come to think of it as her own, and she was currently alone, working on munitions for a potential fight against the being. Right now she was constructing missiles. The old family business.

Loki didn't make a sound when he entered the workshop. Maggie heard the glass doors _swish_ open though, and looked up to see the dark-haired Asgardian standing in the doorway in his 'mortal' clothes: a pitch black suit with a green pocket square, his hair just brushing his collar.

He smiled when she spotted him. "Margaret." He offered a bow that didn't _seem_ mocking. "Tony Stark's sister."

"Loki," Maggie responded. "You figured out Google." She knew that no one else would have bothered to explain her and Tony's relationship to him. She bent back over the projectile she'd been finalizing. "Did you and Shuri figure out those exchange couplers?"

"Yes, they're currently being manufactured," he said. His voice was modulated, not the sarcastic exasperation he usually used with the other Avengers. "I thought I'd come visit you in the meantime. I realized I've been… neglecting the newest members of the _team_."

Maggie didn't look up, but she closely followed his movements as he weaved his way across the various tables and machines in the room. F.R.I.D.A.Y. would let her know if he touched anything. "What did you think of Scott?" she asked as she finalized the wiring.

"Who?"

_Hm._

Loki didn't seem to require an answer, however. "I must admit to being impressed by your skills, Lady Wyvern. My brother told me of your prowess in battle. A scientist and a warrior." Maggie glanced up to see him only a few feet away now, eyeing her with warmth. She looked back down. "Truly, you are a marvel."

"I know."

She saw him smile out of the corner of her eye, and he edged closer. "Humble, too."

"My family doesn't really do humble." She turned to the holoscreen beside her project and finalized the coding.

"I wonder, are you appreciated as you truly ought to be? A woman of your skill and proficiency…" Loki slid past her, his arm brushing hers as he circled her workbench. "And they've sent you into a workshop to do menial work." He shrugged a shoulder as he came to stand at the far end of the workbench, facing her. "Were one of your skill at my disposal, I would not demean you like this."

Maggie looked up. His glittering green eyes were still fixed on her face and his palms rested on the steel workbench. "Is that where you want me?" she asked, curious. "At your disposal?"

"I would never presume to hold you as anything other than an equal," he replied in a low tone. His intense eyes dragged down, slowly, before sliding back up to her face.

"Right." Without breaking their eye contact Maggie reached down to the holoscreen beside her and hit a button.

With a shudder and then an ear-splitting roar, the completed missile on the workbench before her screamed to life. It jetted across the worktable in a heartbeat, reaching a velocity of about two thousand feet per second just as it collided with Loki's suited chest.

Loki didn't have enough time for his surprise to reach his face before the missile launched him across the room in a blur of dark leather and jetstream. Half a second later he collided with the far wall, which shuddered but held, and the missile exploded in his face (just a small explosion, really, Maggie hadn't put in the really heavy-hitting stuff yet). The _bang_ echoed through the workshop.

Loki slumped to the ground, sputtering and covered with soot, and looked up just as a loudly-bleeping Dum-E loaded him up with extinguisher foam.

He made a sorry sight against the workshop wall: his hair was blasted comically back from his soot-and-foam covered face, his fine suit utterly ruined, and his hands flailed at the sudden attack.

When Loki cleared his eyes and looked up he saw Maggie standing over him. She wiped a fleck of foam from her face with her middle finger.

"You're going to listen to me now," she began in an even tone. Loki pushed himself up a little so he was sitting with his back to the wall. His eyes were wide. "If you really want to help put a stop to these magic attacks – which I'm not taking for granted, because of the _God of Lies_ thing – then you need to back off. No more manipulation, no more flirting just to see what happens or because you want something from me."

Loki opened his mouth, but Maggie shot him a _look_. He closed it again.

"In the interests of cooperation, I'm going to answer your questions," she said generously. "Yes, Tony is my brother. Everyone thought I was dead, it's all sorted now, whatever. From the way Thor tells it you should befamiliar with the not-really-dead sibling situation. Secondly, I am _also_ not single, and even if I was I would not be open to romantic advances from a super-old alien who once threw my brother out a window." She paused for a moment. "Sound good?"

Loki rubbed his chest, wincing. "Sounds good," he grunted. "You are not… single?"

She rolled her eyes. "Bucky."

He thought about it. "The soldier with the metal arm."

"Yes, him. And he'll shoot you if he finds out you tried to… seduce me, or whatever that was. So will Tony."

Loki eyed the scorch mark on his suit. "You already shot me."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Yes, and I'll do it again if you don't quit your shit and get on board. Teamwork? Defeating space leeches? Not being a creepy predator?"

He scowled up at her. "Got it."

"Great." Maggie extended her hand and then looked pointedly around at the tumbled tables and machines from Loki's short flight across the workshop. "Now you can help me clean all this up."

Loki took her hand.

* * *

Six days later, they finished the engine. There had been fifteen more leech attacks, though the damage was slightly mitigated by the rapid Avenger response. Doctor Strange didn't even need them all in the same space now – F.R.I.D.A.Y. gave him the magic alert and the locations of the strike team, and he dropped portals under their feet wherever they were to bring them to the scene. One time, Bucky and Steve got portalled out in the middle of a shirtless sparring match in the gym, and made international headlines.

But they finally finished, and after some final checks by the exhausted scientists, Doctor Strange opened a glowing orange portal under the engine and the gathered Avengers – and dropped them on an empty plain in Antarctica.

Maggie flinched at the cold despite the heat tech in her suit, and winced at the bright white glare. She looked around: the engine and the Avengers had appeared on a vast, empty plateau of ice, with not a living thing for hundreds of miles. The sun glared harshly down despite the bitter temperature.

The engine itself looked somewhat like a Faraday cage, only they'd built it the size of a barn: a complex grid of metal bars with hundreds of wires snaking off it, most clumping at the central computer console. You could walk around on access corridors inside the engine, but the main hub was a containment unit the size of an elevator, obscured by the metal structure built around it. They'd be able to monitor it from the computer console.

It was a true combination of science and magic (or rather, _seiðr_ ): the machine comprised the science that Tony, Maggie, Bruce and the others worked with, Loki's powers, Doctor Strange's knowledge of portals and energy transference, and Wakandan science and engineering.

The engine would - hopefully - generate enough vacuum energy to tempt the leech, but not so much that it would overload the engine. Once the leech arrived, the engine's secondary characteristics kicked in: it would loop the energy, gradually weakening the leech enough for Thor and Doctor Strange to transport it to another dimension.

Maggie looked around at the Avengers; they were all out in force today, ready for anything. Most of them wore thick parkas to combat the cold - Scott had also gone in for a brightly colored scarf and beanie. Maggie's suit was designed to protect her against the vacuum of space so she didn't need anything.

Loki stood beside his brother, wearing the same fine suit he always did. When they'd handed out parkas, Vision had offered Loki one only to be cut off by Clint:

"He doesn't need a jacket," Clint had said. "I hear Frost Giants don't feel the cold."

Loki had frozen, then turned very slowly to face Clint. His face was rigid and unreadable, in a look that Maggie knew. She'd worn that look before. "Do not attempt to use terms you do not know to humiliate me."

After that frosty exchange, they'd all portalled here.

"Alright," Tony said, looking around. "No point standing around. Assume the position!"

Rolling their eyes, Avengers broke off to their assigned positions. Most arrayed around the machine, covering every angle with high-tech weapons designed for a figure made of vacuum energy, and the rest climbed into the engine itself.

Maggie met eyes with Bucky, exchanged a nod, and then climbed up the metal rungs on the outside of the engine before slipping inside to find the tertiary computer console she was assigned to monitor. She caught a glimpse of Loki climbing to the top of the machine with his brother. He'd been slightly cagey as per usual, but perfectly helpful. He and Maggie had found themselves on reasonable terms after she hit him with a missile.

Maggie found herself standing on a metal grate walkway, not so much surrounded by walls as a criss-crossing array of metal pipes, wires, and support beams. The bright white sunlight filtered through in slants and slivers.

"Alright, sound off," called Steve into the comms.

"Barnes and Wilson, in position," replied Sam. They quickly went through the rest of the team, and when her turn came Maggie muttered "Wyvern, in position".

"Stark, in position," said Tony finally. "Alright, stay sharp everyone. Here we go. Three, two, one-"

Like a tree at Christmas, the engine around Maggie lit up. She couldn't see the main cage from her position but the entire structure began humming, and the computer console before her came alive with information.

"All systems functional," reported Bruce. "I've got 10 to the power of 9 joules per cubic meter."

Maggie checked her screen. "Confirmed on tertiary."

Then the whole engine shuddered around her, and Maggie watched the data flowing over her screen spike and shift. "Contact!" she cried. _That was fast. This thing must be hungry._

"The figure is inside the cage," reported a calm-sounding Shuri, who monitored the video feed from the heart of the engine. "The structure is holding, the edges of the leech's vacuum field aren't touching the sides."

"Good stuff, now let's get started on the feedback loop. Thor and Strange, hold for now."

Maggie watched as Tony and Bruce started the complex interaction of energy transference: feeding the being, holding it there, while also sapping energy away. A column on her screen went red, and her fingers danced to manually divert excess energy to a power circuit at the other end of the engine. Her legs were going numb from the vibrations of the engine, and she no longer felt the cool Antarctic air on her face.

Her eyes widened at the readings before her. _There's more energy here than I've ever witnessed in my life._ They weren't storing it, really - just diverting and circuiting it, keeping the energy moving throughout the engine until the leech was weak enough to be transported. The thought of what would happen if the engine failed terrified her - they could blow up the southern end of the entire _planet_ with the power here.

All the energy that the creature had stolen was there in the tank with it, just waiting for somewhere to go. They didn't have the technology to siphon it and it'd probably be a bad idea even if they did, but...

Her gut clenched. On a whim, she brought up the engine's camera systems with her free hand. The roof feed showed Thor and Doctor Strange standing by the central shaft, looking down at the cage below, with Loki standing a few paces behind them looking vaguely interested.

With a sense of relief, she flipped through the other cameras just to make sure, and a flash of movement caught her eye. _There_ , on camera H in the eastern corner of the engine, Loki strode down a catwalk toward a metal ladder.

Maggie's breath caught. Her eyes flicked back to the roof feed - Loki still stood there, hands behind his back. Then back to camera H - Loki as well, now jumping down the ladder shaft.

" _Code green_!" she gasped into the comms, and then took off running.

Maggie didn't bother with the ladder when she came to it. She jumped, dropping three stories and clanging to the metal floor of the engine with her heart in her mouth. The Avengers were swearing and panicking in the comms, and after a few moments Thor let out a roar of frustration. Maggie whirled, dodging pylons and wire bundles, until she came to the base of the cage where a strange wind swirled. Her heart seized.

Loki stood before the intricate Vibranium cage with the misty sphere of the leech within it, his hands raised and green magic sparking around him. The green light swirled through the air, encircling the cage like a net of vines, brushing against the edges. The cage glowed bright with shifting lights inside like an aurora: electric blues, purples, pinks, and greens swirling inside, crackling with energy. Loki's skin was washed emerald, his eyes wide and almost desperate.

Maggie raised her specially-designed weapons, then faltered. She didn't want to make the situation worse. The strange wind inside the heart of the engine kicked up a notch, making her stagger slightly, and the chaotic swirl of lights hurt her eyes.

"Loki, stop!" Maggie shouted. "You can't hold it!" _There's not an engine or being on this earth that could hold it._

" _Loki_!" shouted Thor. He'd just dropped down the shaft from the rooftop, his eyes wide and his hair whipping in the unnatural wind. Seconds later a service door burst open to admit Wanda, Tony, Clint, and Steve.

"Cut it out, idiot!" shouted Tony, firing a repulsor beam across at Loki. It glanced off a burst of green light.

Loki's green magic wrapped closer around the cage and Maggie swore she saw the leech inside shift. The crackling aurora of lights swirled tighter, faster. The engine was shaking at its seams. Maggie wrapped one arm around a metal support to keep from being blown off her feet and her heart thundered in her chest.

Thor stepped forward, his steps labored against the wind. "Loki, end this now!"

"I can use it!" Loki shouted back over the noise of shrieking wind and roaring engines. "I could do so much good!"

Ant-Man suddenly appeared on Loki's shoulder, but a flick of green energy swatted him away. A volley of arrows met a similar fate.

Maggie and Tony shared a panicked look across the heart of the engine. He'd clamped his boots into the floor, and beside him Wanda was twisting tendrils of red magic upward, only to flinch back at the touch of the green light.

"The cage won't hold much longer!" Maggie shouted. She shifted her weapon, not sure where to aim.

Thor forged further toward Loki, his every step an effort. "Brother, Asgard needs you for _you_ , not for any power you may bring!" He had to pause feet away, kneeling to grab at the floor to keep from being swept back. He looked at his brother with wide, tormented eyes. Loki didn't take his eyes off the indistinct grey figure in the cage. "Leave this leech to its stolen energy!" Thor called. "You have no need of it!"

Maggie's fingers clenched at her metal support. She was almost directly across from Loki, and she could see the way his skin stretched pale over his face and his fingers shook, as if the effort of siphoning the energy was breaking him apart.

"I can do it, Thor!" he shouted over the noise, his eyes gleaming green.

" _Please_ , brother!"

Loki's fingers clenched in midair, and the cage was wholly consumed by a sphere of green light. But Maggie could see the colors inside practically vibrating, the shadow of the figure moving, stretching-

"Your brother needs you, Loki!" Maggie shouted.

For a few moments, chaos reigned: Maggie's feet lifted from the floor, the vortex swirling inside the engine now too much to resist, and the air pulsed green. No one saw Loki's eyes suddenly darting, first to Maggie upon hearing her words, then across to Thor.

A second later, with a sound like a ship plunging beneath the waves, the green light vanished. Maggie crashed to the ground on her knees and looked up.

Thor was standing, one hand on his brother's shoulder. Loki's arms were still raised but he'd let the magic go; he stood, shaking, his eyes wide and his breath fast.

Tony grunted. "Well thank fuck for-"

With a sound of shrieking metal and splintering glass the cage above them burst open. Maggie whirled to see the hazy grey sphere surging through the containment of the cage as its edges rippled. The figure inside _launched_ forward, limb-like appendages stretched out toward the wide-eyed god below it.

Maggie didn't hesitate this time. She swung up her anti-matter weapon and fired, blasting the figure and its swathe of mist with a clear burst of energy. She wasn't alone: Thor, Tony, Steve, Clint and Wanda also fired on the figure, sending it ricocheting away from Loki. It passed within feet of Maggie and her every hair stood on end at the familiar sensation of _pressure_ , and then-

Lightning and golden light seared Maggie's retinas. A moment before she lifted her arm to block out the brightness she saw the light converge on the leech, encircling it and twisting it up, up-

With the burning afterimage of an indistinct figure haloed by searing light, Maggie turned away.

It took her a few moments to realise that the engine had fallen silent. Her ears echoed with shrieks and explosions, and she couldn't see for the dizzying whirl of colors across her vision. But a moment later her body adjusted and she realised she was half-crouched, one arm over her head, in the middle of a still, silent engine.

Slowly, she straightened and turned around. Avengers were picking themselves up off the floor: Tony helped Steve to his feet, Clint was tangled in a bunch of wires, Wanda was rubbing her eyes, and on the far side of the engine Ant-Man sprang up to a normal size, groaning.

Thor was gone, and when Maggie looked up she couldn't see Doctor Strange peering down from the roof. _Good_ , she thought numbly, _it went sort of to plan, then_ \- Thor and Strange had taken the creature to dimensions unknown.

She glanced back down and saw Loki kneeling on the metal grate, looking down at his open palms. His chest rose and fell heavily, and his dark hair hung around his face. Maggie glanced over to Steve and Tony, who met her gaze and then slowly approached Loki. Maggie mirrored their steps.

When he sensed the three standing before him, Loki looked up. His face was more expressive than Maggie had ever seen it, wrought with exhaustion and anguish. His bones were prominent, and shadows hung under his eyes. Holding all that energy had been debilitating for him - Maggie guessed that if he'd hung on much longer, it would have killed him.

On his knees before Maggie, Steve, and Tony, Loki drew in a shuddering breath. "You protected me."

A long silence passed. Metal creaked, and frozen wind swirled down from the main shaft.

"Well," Steve eventually said. "You're an Avenger." He held out a hand. "We protect our own."

* * *

Two days later, Maggie squinted in the summer sunshine at the Avengers Compound as she stood on the Quinjet launchpad with the rest of the Avengers, most of them in casual clothes. Thor, Loki, and Valkyrie stood amidst them all, saying their goodbyes. They were travelling back to New Asgard today.

Loki still looked pale from his encounter with the interdimensional leech, but his bones no longer looked like they were going to poke through his skin and he'd regained his lazy, disinterested aura - though it had softened, if only incrementally. He accepted Wanda's handshake, and even smiled slyly at something she said to him.

Thor was loudly retelling the tale of how he and Doctor Strange had transported the leech to a dimension of deep space. "We ensured it found a void to fill, from where it could not travel-"

"We were all there when you planned this, Thor," Valkyrie sighed.

"But you weren't in the deep recesses of space with us!" Thor protested. "Never have I known a darkness so vast-"

He was distracted by Bruce offering him a hug, and Maggie laughed under her breath. She stood beside Bucky, their shoulders brushing, and she turned to see him smirking. He stood with his legs slightly widened to accommodate Artemis, who sat with her head between his knees. Maggie looked down to see the dog looking up at her, tongue hanging out of her mouth.

Thor made his way through the Avengers, scooping most of them into a massive hug, and ruffling Tony's hair fondly. Valkyrie and Maggie clasped hands, smiling, and Valkyrie made her promise to come visit New Asgard again soon.

At the same moment, Loki and Doctor Strange faced off to Maggie's left, eyeing each other. As Valkyrie shook hands with Bucky, Maggie watched the wizard and the god standing in silence.

"You weren't as much of an asshole as you could've been," Strange eventually relented.

"Likewise," Loki responded evenly, and then turned away - right towards Maggie.

Loki inclined his head. "Lady Wyvern."

Maggie eyed him, trying to decide how genuine he was being. They'd warmed to each other these past few days. She settled on: "Don't make me shoot you again."

He raised his hands, almost respectful, and smiled. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"Well then," Maggie nodded. She glanced at Bucky, then back to Loki. "If you're ever in need of some time away, we have a spare bed at our place. Come by whenever you like."

Maggie thought she saw Loki's surprise in the incremental widening of his eyes and his brief silence, but he hid it well. After a moment he inclined his head once more and then stepped aside - eyeing Bucky, raising an eyebrow at Artemis, and then moving on to the Wakandans.

Bucky leaned in toward Maggie. "Why'd you shoot him? Do I need to shoot him?"

Maggie shrugged. "If you want. I think I handled it though."

Bucky sniffed. "Waste of a good bullet."

Maggie smiled. She knew he couldn't wait to see if the alien would drop by their house for a visit. "It was a missile."

Artemis licked Maggie's hand.

When Thor, Loki and Valkyrie converged once more, the rest of the Avengers took a big step back. Tony, Bruce and Steve stood closest, eyeing them.

"Y'know," Tony said slowly, "I feel like there's probably a position for a _seiðr_ expert at the Asgardian Embassy. We're trying to open up knowledge and tech exchanges."

Loki raised an eyebrow even as he put his hand on Thor's shoulder. "Trying to explain what I do to you primitives? I'd rather live in a black hole."

Valkyrie rolled her eyes and put her hand on Thor's other shoulder. Thor was beaming.

Tony smirked. "Think about it."

Thor raised his axe and a rush of thunder and streaking lights descended on the launchpad, blowing Maggie's hair back from her face and making Bucky lift his metal hand to shield his eyes. A moment later the arc of light vanished and the three Asgardians were gone, leaving a rune etched in embers in their wake.

Cocking her head, Maggie noticed that the embers glowed faintly green.


End file.
